The phenomenon of digitalization of the drama theater: digital as the latest experience of the Tovstonogov BDT

Batarshin Roman Raifovich ORCID: 0000-0002-9687-1331 Graduate Student, Department of Russian Theater, Russian State Institute of Performing Arts 191028, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Mokhovaya str., 33-35 rbatarshin@gmail.com

The modern picture of culture has initiated significant transformations in the field of modeling the theatrical process. An approach insisting on an attempt to explore new spaces, including those existing in virtual reality – digital, is being applied more and more steadily in relation to the activities of the theater. Here, as usual on the theatrical territory, there is a dramatic coupling: on the one hand, the sphere is social and communicative, on the other hand, it is an artistic issue. 

The concept of culture is multifaceted, and its interpretation in conjunction with the movement of social life finds new boundaries of meanings that fit into the understanding of the aesthetics of postmodernism. Many thinkers, from representatives of the exact sciences to figures in the humanities, have reflected on the problems of general culture and its place in modern history. The cultural situation in our country had the features of the coming crisis. For example, according to the philosopher Merab Mamardashvili, modern culture, which began its history at the beginning of the XXI century, is marked by an anthropological catastrophe. For various reasons, including historical ones, the direction of the movement of historical thought is also connected with overcoming a specific time interval. In other words, a certain cultural cycle has its beginning and its end; this situation is of a changeable nature, where the movement of history is fundamentally a cause-and-effect relationship. The change of epochs is equal to the change of models of cultural life. Theater as an art, which is exemplary and indicative of the tools of reflection, has an incredible ability to capture the rhythms of life. The social situation with all its fractures is a phenomenon that has always been in the focus of attention of the theater scene. All the arts are about a person, but the theater is arranged in such a special way that its focus is not only on the person as a unit of the philosophical category, but also on the model of the world, the picture of today. In this sense, the theater reflects life and is reflected in life at the same time.

The state of chaos, instability, and uncertainty experienced by humanity today, according to the philosopher, Professor G. A. Pestnikov, is associated with the "identity crisis" of almost all forms of cultures, including art and aesthetics that comprehend it. Perhaps, "this crisis found its fullest expression in the postmodern paradigm of culture" ^{[1, p. 209]}.  The essence of the postmodern concept, in our opinion, was succinctly and sharply expressed by J.-F. Lyotard: "war to the whole" ^{[2, p. 52]}. Here, destructurization, deliberate disconnection and deliberate violation of logical and semantic connections, installation of impulses and states, redirection of the vector from the side of the thought about the analysis of action and its evaluation, depersonalization of human individuality, the principle of "crowds and masses", lack of desire for the idea of creation, craving for conscious destruction and erasure of traditional canonical postulates are phenomena that refer to We are drawn to the philosophical ideas of postmodernism and to the essence of the phenomenon of deconstruction. Now the world appeared to have disintegrated into unrelated particulars, visible from a randomly opened angle of view. One picture replaced another. But did she replace it? And we are not talking here about the crushing of values – although it is characteristic of our time, it is a territory trampled by art for a long time. It's different here. At the semantic level, the idea of any rejection of integrity and logical connections, the blurring of boundaries in art and culture, the desire for freedom as such is indicative and conceptual for postmodern philosophy.

"The state of Postmodernity" brought the Russian theater face to face with the need to realize the following aspects: new conditions for the existence of the theater in the constantly changing context of media culture, high speed of changing the focus of audience attention, the coexistence of various artistic practices in a single cultural field, as well as the increasingly entrenched clip type of perception of the modern viewer.

By the end of the twentieth century, Russian humanities had diagnosed a spiritual crisis for modern humanity. Here is what Doctor of Philosophy Yuri Shor writes about it: "Modern humanity is in the deepest crisis. Economic, political, environmental, psychological, social, spiritual. First of all, spiritual, because the spiritual crisis is ideological confusion, ideological distortions, disfigurement of world perception. This time correlates with Friedrich Nietzsche's famous thought "God is dead" ^{[3, pp. 79-80]}. A person of the perestroika period in Russia found himself in a situation of dispersion. The era of "perestroika", the turn of the XX-XXI centuries, namely the last decade of the twentieth century brought fundamental changes to our country. The socio-cultural situation formed by immersion in the postmodern state and the transition to a market economy with its globalization processes has created new conditions for the functioning of art in general and theater in particular. Within the framework of the capitalist system, a person is primarily a consumer, with his interests, needs, tastes and real social needs. In Russia, during the late XX and early XXI centuries, everything changed: the state structure, the economy, and the worldview, and, as a result, the goals and objectives facing theaters: the change of epochs was equal to the change of strategies, both managerial and artistic. Elena Levshina, a specialist in the field of theater management, wrote about this time: "It is considered that the turn of the XX-XXI centuries is the beginning of a new socio-cultural era. Its main feature is a fundamental change in the role of artistic culture in the life of society" ^{[4, p. 28]}. Consequently, even in the post-Soviet period of Russian history, the meanings and forms of Russian culture and art changed significantly. Many new phenomena and trends have emerged in artistic culture. And the theater space was marked by the desire to comprehend experimental forms of artistic expression. At the same time, the pattern remains the same: culture forms a person, and a person forms the world in which he lives.

As before, the modern artistic process is considered in the context of the laws of the postmodern era, the sphere of which continues to pose acute questions to the art world on the topic of criteria and boundaries. The turn of the millennium (XX-XXI centuries), characterized by the processes of globalization, is increasingly introducing into the world the universal symbolism of the sign system corresponding to the postmodern consciousness. In such a reality, human content is practically negligible: it is minimized. Only the sign of a man has remained of a man, it is not yet completely possible for the theater to determine the scope of its inner world by artistic laws in the postmodern paradigm. The Renaissance man, who once reached the peak of height in the space of world artistic culture and became the "center of the world", for example, the great image of the "Vitruvian man" by Leonardo da Vinci, has now been replaced by a new picture of the world, which is described by the process of continuous artistic searches for the human principle, its minimum spiritual content. The shredding of human essence has been objectively determined for the aesthetic paradigm of the postmodern cultural age.

The modern domestic theater of the second decade of the XXI century seems to have largely determined its positioning in the general space of national culture and art. However, the search for an adequate language for the theater's dialogue with modern Russian society continues to this day. Theaters had to define their own purpose, look for a place in the changed system of artistic coordinates, reconsider the attitude to the viewer, as well as establish communication links with the updated world order.

The Russian theater of modern times is increasingly actively interacting with the most diverse spheres of human life, with the most diverse artistic and social practices. The multifunctionality and multidimensional nature of theatrical manifestations requires a very different format of artistic models. The art form itself is open to the integration of various elements and techniques of related arts and fields of activity into it, which contributes to the emergence of hybrid performative genres, including digital formats (digital).  The existence of the theater in the contextual field of new art and socio-cultural practices is becoming one of the most important components of the creative search for the modern stage. The very concept of an artistic environment is changing, which takes on the features of an art space, where the creative role of participants in theatrical and performative events in various historical realities, which we directly witness, is significantly activated.

The period of coronavirus restrictions turned out to be a special socio-cultural manifesto. The spring pandemic of 2020 around the world was marked by the mass migration of cultural institutions into the global web. The long period of total closure of theaters literally forced creative collectives willy-nilly to "move" to the world network. Practically all theaters and theater centers attempted to conduct a continuous dialogue with their audience. Forced measures contributed to the formation of a new reality, including an artistic one.

Contrary to the theatrical specifics, which is determined solely by the process of live communication, many collectives continued to conduct a dialogue with their audience, technically uploading video recordings of performances, both archival and current repertoire, to their websites and social media resources. In most cases, the quality of the shooting turned out to be low, only for the reason that the recording itself was technical and intended for use for official purposes. Theaters with expensive audio and video equipment could boast on the Internet of the same recordings of their performances, but only mounted more efficiently and technologically professionally. 

The forced measure of self–isolation threw a completely different challenge to the theater - holding an online premiere of the play. Literally with an empty auditorium, the artists of the Alexandrinsky Theater played the premiere of the play "Mauser" directed by Theodoros Terzopoulos. However, such a theatrical experience turned out to be particularly exceptional in nature, which requires separate independent reflection and research.

Another way of virtual existence of theaters appeared in the form of a related format of specific online promotions. It was he who in the digital space turned out to be the most curious phenomenon as a new reality from the point of view of the completeness of the embodiment of the theatrical model, as well as from the point of view of the searches dictated by postmodern postulates.  

One of the first repertory drama theaters, which almost completely, as much as possible, exclusively and artistically inimitable "overloaded" into the world network, turned out to be the Tovstonogov BDT.  The new author's digital platform "BDT Digital" was structurally created and created, first of all, as a space, the content and content of which is close to the live theatrical process. The digital portal "BDT Digital" is a virtual space in which the creative life of the Bolshoi Drama Theater unfolded during the pandemic and not only. Andrey the Mighty, the ideological inspirer of the current project, made quite a bold attempt to keep the theatrical process alive without possible "pauses". "The Mighty accumulates in its space and beyond the nearby borders all the latest pressing and today's pretentious, often unrelated to art and theater directly and directly — without hesitation and without fear of this complex alloy. Portal "BDT Digital" (it seemed like a pandemic, realized and found itself — a new word about the resources, capabilities and languages of the large theater system) — an example of this is the most revealing" ^[5]. The digital platform of the Bolshoi Drama Theater did not turn into a copy of the official website of the BDT, there was another task at all – not a technical one. To find exactly an artistic life in the gadget screen is such a problematic issue that arose before the creators and creators of the digital theater. The location of "BDT Digital" is an independent cultural and creative dimension, demanding the sometimes impossible – to preserve and offer a completely different way of "speaking" to the art of drama theater. And this mission fell to the creative team of BDT - to move from the living reality – the scene - to that new, different, digital reality, in the space of which bold artistic principles and ideas were born, dictated by a difficult time for the whole world at once. The question related to the place, time and essence of such an artistic phenomenon as BDT Digital is proposed for consideration in a specific article from the standpoint of two diverse contexts: virtual BDT as a forced measure of creative survival in the circumstances of covid and virtual BDT as an independent creative statement within the artistic concept of "theater as an art space".

It is obvious that the repertoire policy of the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater of the last decade has been formed according to a new principle: along with the performances of the current repertoire, various educational programs, creative meetings, and master classes are actively conducted in the theater space. The format of lecture events has also fundamentally entered into the creative activity of the BDT under the artistic direction of Andrei the Mighty. With the arrival of the Mighty in 2013 to the post of artistic director, the Tovstonogovsky BDT purposefully moves towards a new artistic model.  

In order to actively exist in the Internet world, the BDT Digital portal has incorporated the maximum possible artistic and creative practices. Filling with various materials of this quite saturated digital field differs in a rather logically structured structure: video recordings of archival performances, creative meetings with an actor live (stream), radio performances, a music block (clips for popular songs), on-screen performances of the current repertoire, an actor in a monologue (documentary theater), a Minecraft performance.  

A distinctive feature of the virtual environment of BDT Digital is manifested, first of all, by the presence of a living person in an inanimate space. The figure of a dramatic actor who descended from a large stage stage into a gadget screen appears as a central figure for analysis in the artistic process of digital theater. The actor-role-spectator relationship is considered in the context of three states of an actor's existence in various versions: an actor in a play that is shown online, an actor in a documentary monologue and an actor in a minecraft play. The formula fixed once by the author of the monograph "The Life of Drama" Eric Bentley, where A plays B in front of C (actor-role-spectator), serves us in a certain sense as a hint to answer the question – is virtual reality ready to provide a place for theatrical art in its digital environment, provided that the above-described triad is fundamentally and invariably defines the artistic model of the drama theater that is familiar to all of us. Considering theater exclusively as art, it is considered according to Hegel that it is the second reality, at the very time when life itself is the first reality. What kind of reality (first or second) does an actor's artistic statement become in the Digital space? Is it capable of becoming the art of theater? Or, some third reality is being formed here, which has already gone far beyond the limits of the usual understanding of art for all of us. However, thinking about these issues requires a separate study. An important element can be considered that the actor-viewer relationship in the stage space of the digital BDT is not so easy to establish: there is obviously an obstacle between the conditional stage and the hall – the gadget screen. Energy interchange occurs blindly: during the game, the actor does not repel the reaction of the viewer, existing in the proposed circumstances "by touch". This kind of relationship is absolutely completely devoid of energy communication and synchronous "communication" of the hall and the stage (albeit virtual). In such a situation, a certain chain of sequential actions is built: the actor exists in a kind of stage space, playing a role, then this information is transmitted to another carrier – the viewer sitting at the monitor, and only after viewing the artistic material performed by the actor, the final carrier of this information – the viewer – forms a reflection about what he saw. This principle fully describes the option of watching a video performance: there is a need to attempt to pull everything into a single action time, the desired opportunity about the moment. And time here is decomposed into three periods, which are inherently unrelated. The recording of the actors' play in the performance by the camera takes place at one specific time, viewing the video of the same performance by the viewer is assumed at another time, and the very connection of the actor's energy thrown out of the conditional ramp and the viewer's reaction suggest a completely different temporary state in which the very belated energy connections that were slowed down should be established the monitor screen. What does not resemble the digital reality of the life of society of the XXI century: we read an elementary SMS message obviously later than the moment when it was written by someone for us. And in this sense, the role of the actor in the performance, which the viewer watches in the video recording format, is necessarily limited: the one who sees such an invariant of the video performance reads only information about the performance (if the performance is filmed on several video cameras, a version of the TV performance already appears, which exists according to its own laws, which are imposed by the profession of television directing).  It simply does not turn out to be a legitimate opportunity to become a theater spectator watching a video recording of a performance due to the fact that the living process "here and now" by its nature does not have reserves to find itself fully in the space of digital reality.

Checking the strength of the primary – vital – reality determined and formed the quarantine season, when the BDT-digital was formed, focused on the social context. Charity event "Help doctors", where the entire troupe of the famous BDT sounded confessions of medical workers from real time. Here the avant–garde technique is to enter into life by means of art, into that reality, which is not just primary, but literally called the "red zone". In fact, the social motive of the action is framed by an avant–garde idea: the direct transformation of reality – the collection of funds for their further donation to hospitals - with the help of art, which is exclusively a second, non-life reality.

Truly dramatic confessions of medical workers from the polyphonic sounded with the voices of the artists of the Bolshoi Drama Theater in the online campaign "Help the doctors". Artists of different generations, artists for whom moving from a large stage form and generally leaving the stage to the gadget screen is not just a new way of acting, but an alien and quite specifically non—theatrical way of "speaking". Essential: here is the voice of Alice Freundlich on behalf of the doctor. It was Freundlich's voice that was once the "voice in headphones", who led the exhibition in the project "Keep Forever" (2018, "Manege", St. Petersburg) and became the theatrical voice of a special Petersburg - besieged Leningrad. Once upon a time, Freundlich's voice became a theater that the Mighty preserved in eternity. Now this voice is an exit into life from the field of art into that reality, which is not just "primary", but directly called the "red zone". The literal action is the collection of funds for those who find themselves in a new and undoubted blockade. The voice of that theater and art — which is Alice Freundlich.

On the monitor screen, one by one, the images of all the videos with each artist were located, which quite reminded itself of the gallery of actor portraits in the foyer of the theater. Only these faces are already seen differently – it is impossible not to draw a parallel with the image on which there are many square faces, having met online in Zoom during that very covid pandemic. "A fast-paced tape of acting blitzes cutting into consciousness: BDT artists appear one after another with brief, sometimes very brief, messages-notes from doctors from the battlefield going on in our pandemic era hospitals" ^[6].

And this time the BDT turned out to be a pioneer when it launched a relay movement to other theaters across the country in this social action. Every text written by a doctor or nurse is filled with drama. All the theatricality is evident: insoluble dramatic contradictions that have arisen on the border of past and new life (life before and during the pandemic as a powerful gesture of dramatic conflict). In the relations of that very triad "actor-role-spectator", the figure of the "role" is no longer in the foreground in the proposed circumstances. An actor reading a doctor's confession does not become a doctor: his relationship with the role changes. The way of actor's existence literally proceeds from the laws of documentary theater: the former reality, which has already ended in the past, finds a new life in the present. An actor with a text (according to the verbatim type), bypassing the role, is addressed to the viewer sitting in a living reality and looking into virtual reality through the glass of the gadget screen. Studying the evolution of the performance system, theater theorist, Professor Y. M. Barboy noticed that not only the actor, but also the role "turns out to be a complex, systemic education" ^{[7, p. 244]}. Theorists who are engaged in purely modern material have to reckon with this factor. Hans-Tis Lehman, for example, defines theater this way: "Theater means: a time period of life spent together in this jointly inhaled air of space, where theatrical play and the act of perception (viewing) takes place. The production and perception of signs and signals occur simultaneously" ^{[8, p. 28]}. In turn, Erika Fischer-Lichte, a researcher of performative practices, believed as follows: "In order for the performance to take place, the actors and the audience must gather in a certain place for a certain period of time to perform joint actions <...> The audience is perceived as partners in the game, whose physical presence, reactions, perception form the performance on a par with the actions of the actors" ^{[9, p. 56]}. Another, more radical point of view is offered by Heiner Goebbels. He is skeptical about the word "role". But in his book there are the following passages: "In the absence of actors, things, theatrical means of expression and stage elements themselves turn into protagonists" ^{[9, p. 56]}. So in his theater, with an actor-human or without – in any case, there is a protagonist, that is, someone or something that performs this role. I remember how Jerzy Grotowski defended sincerity in the theater. In order to completely defeat it, it was necessary to "eliminate the source of lies – the Role. Such a reduction does not give a super-poor theater, but a non-theater" ^{[10, p. 33]}.

The power of drama in the way of acting in online promotions was obviously palpable. "This is a phenomenon of theater, a real theater. The troupe of the Bolshoi Dramatic, like a compressed spring, is charged with a single pain here. A splash of creative energy cancels quarantine virtuality — the curse of our current theatrical evenings. The human, civic essence of a single utterance is impressive, in all the diversity of individuals, precisely in conjunction with the creative will of the troupe" ^[6]. The actor's word sounded loud. An actor sitting in ordinary clothes in the interiors of his apartment and reading a documentary text, took shape in the image of a private person whose life was limited to apartment square meters in conditions of rigid self-isolation. Statistics on the YouTube portal were actively conducted: figures indicating the number of viewer views were clearly recorded under each video. And as if a parallel, imperceptibly conducted sociological research. To some extent, it reminded me of voting for a specific video shot by the author, perhaps for a text written separately by a medical professional, or maybe even at all, which becomes the main thing for us - for a specific actor's personality. And in this way, a numerical array of data on the videos viewed testified to the fact that the viewer (even sitting behind the screen of his electronics) still "goes" to the artist. He chooses, first of all, his personality. An actor for whom, in the usual times, the same person purposefully went to the auditorium and tried with all his might to become a theater spectator. In the new, established reality – digital – the audience's reflection on the actor's skill is still palpable.

The Minecraft performance project has also found rapid development in the digital field of BDT Digital. The idea completely originated from the popular computer game of the same name – Minecraft. Three performances at once – as a sign of a certain fairy tale, unlike the usual life - entered the repertoire of the virtual BDT: "Cherry Orchard", "Mozart and Salieri", "Nedorosl". The viewer was presented with graphics exactly copying the Minecraft computer game. The whole world is full of squeaks. The overall picture of the world turned out to be fragmented, consisting not just of parts, but of parts of these parts. The postmodern idea has also found its relevance here. Each digital performance has a defined duration - it is less than half an hour. Something resembling an educational program. It is during this time that the theatrical action unfolds with all its scale: the viewer (so let's call the viewer of this creative act), getting into the auditorium chair drawn with pixels, passes through the entire path (which is usually offered to the theater audience) of the theater, right from the entrance through the cash register foyer, buffet, promenades and only then the auditorium. What is happening on the stage is also a drawn pixel picture. There is a hero of the play on the virtual stage, let's assume that this is Chekhov's Lopakhin. But the hero becomes Lopakhin only when a player figure appears on the stage (resembling a hero from the Lego series of games), which in turn assumes the right to become the hero of the play. The role of the actor in this performance to some extent turns out to be two-part: the BDT actor, without leaving home, voices the hero with his voice (he is also a player), and after that, the pixel figure of the player, voiced by the actor's voice, plays a role from Chekhov's play. Quite an obvious plot involving a trickster hero. Chain: BDT actor - Minecraft player - a role from a classic play. The actor whose voice plays the player, who, in turn, plays the role of Lopakhin.  "This art, like any other, gives birth to a kind of work of a non-everyday and unsettled order. It places a person's consciousness in another metaphysical chronotope, connected through a system of artistic practices with real life, thereby developing and enriching his knowledge of the world" ^[11]. It is obvious that the structural ties between the actor-role and the viewer are naturally broken. These relations are not energetically fulfilled. In any case, the necessary equivalent for theatrical existence is a constant search for vital energy and its exchange between all participants in the process of co–creation, co-thought, co-unity. In any case, this process – interrupting the "breathing" of the theater – turned out to be paramount and obvious. The connection between life and virtuality is visibly erased.

The Minecraft performances project in a special form appeared as an exemplary manifesto that arose during a dramatic conflict between real life and virtual. The image of this creative performative phenomenon is presented in the form of a picture of the building of the Bolshoi Drama Theater, which is literally drawn in pixels brick by brick – what is not a virtual tour of world museums with the function of viewing interiors at 360 degrees. Going to the theater, to the very virtual BDT, its viewer, as before, passes through the central doors, follows through the cash register foyer, then finds himself in any corner where the viewer of the Bolshoi Drama Theater has access. Only such a visit to the BDT became a copy of life in a special way. Everything is like in reality, only virtually. The year 2020 has become decisive for the whole world – to some extent, a temporary understanding of the end of life has come. I remember how A. N. Ostrovsky in the play "The Forest" at the crossroads of two roads near the sign there are two actors: Lucky and Unlucky, wherever you go - there is no theater. And there is quite a theatrical explanation for this: life turned out to be faceless, not needing reflection on the art of the stage. The life that is dead - it has no reserves for reflection in the second reality, which is the art of the theater and the mirror of the stage. Ostrovsky described the artistic image of the end of life in an exemplary manner. And by no means the end of the theater. In this situation, the end of the theater has not come: as long as there are two Lucky and Unlucky people, the theater will be alive, since these two are the bearers of that very theater. Finding himself in a global situation of life crisis, the artistic director of the BDT Andrey Moguchy boldly and decisively made an attempt to tell the world that the theater is alive: the very Minecraft performance is a pure performance, defining in its artistic image only a symbol of a theatrical performance. And BDT Digital, with its large-scale artistic manifesto, marked the place of the theater in the life of society of the XXI century: the entire theater, starting from the main entrance, ending with a detailed auditorium, literally "unloaded" from one reality into that new one, where a person, for whatever reason, found himself alone not only with himself, but also with the screen your gadget.

Digital reality determines its place in the space of life and dictates its own laws of coexistence with the world of culture. Pixel illustration of the picture of life, in which the main modern person, for art is seen blurred. And indeed the fact is obvious: a person has not yet learned to conflict with a pixel. And the art of theater has not yet been able to define the dramatic contradiction between the two forces – the living and the virtual – according to its unique artistic laws. The theater does not yet see it possible how to place "pixel" relationships in the category of dramatic action. In the aesthetic picture of postmodernism, a person turns out to be only a sign of a person. Behind the sign of a living person, the person himself may not be at all. Here a person is an imitation of a person. Exactly the same as in the case of the theater: behind the sign of the theater is not a theater, there is only an imitation of it. The imitated person and the theater have "entered" the new digital space of life in a special way, where the right to acquire their individuality and manifest their self-sufficiency, alas, is not given. As part of the VII International Summer Festival of Arts "Access Point", the so-called "Benefit of Rosa Khairullina" took place. This performance in many ways appeared as a manifesto on the theme of the place of the "human" in the space of the life that willingly paves the way for digitalization. For several days, the actress was completely isolated in the glazed space of the New Stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater and was in full view of all the "spectators" passing by. "Fatigue from the surrounding reality, forcing a person to endlessly reproduce himself, is symptomatic of our time" ^{[12, p. 25]}. The purpose of this performance was addressed to the desire of the actress herself "to reset, to be cleansed of all the layers of alluvium, to disincarnate so much that not just to cease to be an actress, but ideally to cease to be a person" ^{[12, p. 25]}. At the end of the performative action, the actress leaves, completely leaving the stage space. Her silhouette completely disappears from the viewer's attention. All that remains is its 3D model, created with the help of advanced technologies. The mission of the human pixel program turned out to be completely fulfilled. Perhaps executed without the person himself.

Considering the various formats of all kinds of creative utterances of border cultures, we conduct their art criticism analysis through the "optics" of a fundamentally theatrical one. It is fair and not unreasonable to believe that with the radical changes that have been taking place in the theater in recent years, with the bold expansion of the boundaries that are taking place around the theater, the question arises – is this still a theater? Or are these already some kind of modifications that cancel, if not all, then many sides that habitually describe to us exactly the theatrical model. We still believe that the seemingly lapidary formula described by Eric Bentley, where "A depicts B in front of C" ^{[13, p. 160]}, which has every reason to be meaningful and justified, largely determines the theater. The actor who plays the role in the presence of the viewer remains unchanged.  Consequently, we draw a boundary between theatrical art, the invariant of which is the Bentley triad, and various performative practices and cultural forms, the manifestation of which turned out to be "stemming" from the postmodern era, as well as after the "performative turn". 

Obviously, the digital theater "BDT Digital" is not a theater. It is the bearer of the theater, the sign of the theater, the potency to the art of theater, its audiovisual imitation. Anyway, it is the figure of the actor here that has become central to the creative life of the virtual BDT. However, filling with living energy "here and now" does not happen. The theatrical model, in its own way, restores the life model that sociologists directly call life roles. A person enters life with the help of roles. Here are no other opportunities to put your volume into the space of life have not been found. And this model has not been canceled yet. There is reason to assume that the theater, restoring and modeling the life version of a person, with the help of roles included in the scope of life, has not yet realized. And in this sense, an actor, a person playing a role in the presence of an audience, remains a figure that cannot be canceled for the theater in any of its historical versions, any of its sets.

The Bolshoi Drama Theater as a repertory theater is practically the only one in Russia that offered the actor complete creative freedom to exist in the space of a virtual stage. Digital activity has actively entered the repertoire policy of the Tovstonogov BDT. It is this experience of forced measures that pushes the creative team of the theater to new artistic challenges, thereby expanding the usual understanding of the repertory theater and continuing the practical development of the concept of "art space".  The traditional concept of "repertory theater" for the Russian stage is insufficient. The "repertoire" that the Russian theater of the XX century built and provided itself with is by no means the only factor determining the creative direction. Today, theaters – large and small – often "assemble" themselves by a principle different from the previous "politics". Large state theaters, such as the BDT, strive for a multi-focus perception of the traditions and innovations of theatrical art. The viewer, previously limited only by the limits of theatrical utterance, now receives new rights, powers and new spaces. The new system accumulates and constructs exactly such a new viewer, formed in the modes of the postmodern worldview.